It took Cesco half an hour after his exchange with Baldassare to compose himself enough to turn his phone back on. His anxiety came flooding back when he saw he had a new text waiting.
Cesco sat at the first bench he came to then took a long deep breath to steel himself.
Cesco’s heart seemed to falter inside his chest.
The signal was weak. The files downloaded with frustrating slowness. But finally two sketches appeared, the left-hand one of which showed a thug with discoloured and misshapen teeth. He stared at it, unnerved.
His phone rang in his hand. ‘Forget who did the damn sketches,’ said Baldassare. ‘What matters is the men. Is it them?’
Cesco hesitated. ‘I told you. They wore balaclavas.’
‘You must have some idea.’
‘It wasn’t like that. You weren’t there. It was dark. They made us face the wall whenever they brought food or changed the bucket. And the only one who ever spoke to us was older than these two. Even back then, I mean, and that was years ago.’
‘But…?’
‘Who said anything about a but?’
‘It was in your voice.’
Cesco took a deep breath. ‘There were three of them. The older guy and a couple of younger ones who did what the older guy told them. We caught odd glimpses of them, and yes, one had bad teeth. Not as bad as these, but bad. Anyway, Carmen didn’t draw these herself, right? She described them to an artist.’
‘Exactly. Exactly.’
So it was you, thought Cesco in dismay. You reckless fucking idiot. ‘There’s something else,’ he said. ‘I thought it might be my imagination, but if you’re right…’
‘Yes?’
‘The older man’s voice. It haunted me for years. He was ’Ndrangheta, no doubt about it. He used the exact same vernacular they all did. But it had a quality to it. Not an accent exactly. An intonation. A cadence. As if he’d been living abroad. The guy I spoke with the other day, he was also Calabrian. And he had something similar, only even more pronounced.’
‘Similar? Or the same?’
‘I don’t know. My ear’s not good enough. But it gave me a jolt when I heard it, I’ll tell you that much. And something else. On the boat that night…’
‘The boat?’ asked Baldassare.
‘The night they, you know… It was…’ He tried to bring it to his mind but, even after all these years, he couldn’t do it, he flinched from it like a blade from a spinning whetstone. ‘I can’t,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry. Please don’t ask me to—’
‘It’s okay,’ said Baldassare soothingly. ‘It’s okay.’ He waited a few moments before speaking again. ‘We’ll leave it there for now, shall we?’
‘Yes. Yes. You’ll let me know of any developments?’
‘Of course. Of course.’
‘Was this… was this what tomorrow was about?’
‘No. That’s something else altogether. Something I’m very much looking forward to. So don’t you dare think of cancelling. And thank you for this. You’ve been a great help.’
‘Good. Good.’ He killed the call then set off again, trying to walk the agitation from his arms and legs, taking turns at random until he no longer had any idea of where he was or where he was headed. But it was no good. He came to an abrupt halt and took out his phone to study Carmen’s sketches once more.
Was this them? Was this really them? And if so…
For all his years away, Cesco was Calabrian still. The notion of destiny was bred into his bones. For years now, he’d been telling himself that his return to Italy and his movements since had been forced on him by circumstance. But he’d always known the truth of it deep down. He’d been drawing ever closer to Cosenza because he had unfinished business there. He just hadn’t been quite ready for it. Ready or not, however, the time had now come. For that was the thing about being Calabrian. That was the main thing. When it came to family, there was only one law, and it was the old one.
Eye for eye, tooth for tooth; blood for blood, life for life.
If this was them… If this was truly them…
People were going to die.
The Bussento footpath was narrow, forcing Carmen and Zara into single file. The river itself ran wide and deep, its bottom scattered with stones as smooth and large as flat brown loaves. Trees stooped branches to the water, tickling ripples with their leaves and catching plastic bags that swelled like windsocks in the breeze. The embankments on either side grew taller and steeper, until finally making the transition from valley into gorge, from whose sheer grey walls a few hardy shrubs clung like unnerved mountaineers.
The footpath split away from the river, taking them up through an overgrown orchard to a small parking area and a stone staircase that zigzagged back down to the valley floor, its trees covered by brilliant green moss that straggled from their branches like fur from the limbs of an orangutan. A designated nature reserve, so a sign informed them, where the Bussento emerged from the mountain it entered near the town of Caselle in Pittari, some six kilometres away. A young woman on a deckchair relieved them of five euros each and pointed them along another footpath. A rumbling noise grew louder as they walked, like a train approaching a station. They reached a wooden deck. A cliff face rose sheer in front of them, riven by a great cleft, as though some ancient god of war had struck it with his axe. They made their way inside, trading the bright sunshine for such cool darkness that, for a moment, it left them blind.
In Carmen’s mind, grottos were little more than shallow scrapings in the rock. The Bussento grotto was not like that at all. It was vast. Overwhelming. A staircase had been hewn down through the limestone, emerging onto a wooden walkway fixed to its left-hand wall. This led to a slatted bridge that straddled the chasm above the river to reach a second passage hewn in the right-hand wall that led yet deeper into the grotto, but which had been roped off to tourists, turning the bridge into a viewing platform. Carmen gripped its rail and stared deeper into the cavern. It bent slowly around to her right before vanishing into the darkness. Huge stalactites hung from its high ceiling, while, far beneath her feet, the Bussento ran with seeming placidity until it reached the grotto mouth, where its waters were churned into a violent white froth as it squeezed out between a mess of tumbled boulders.
Many millions of years before, there’d have been a great lake on the far side of this mountain. Over the geological ages since, its waters had literally dissolved this karst limestone, eating its way through six full kilometres of it before finally making breach high above their heads, releasing the Bussento to flow down to the sea. And it had continued eroding the rock ever since, so that the same river now ran far beneath their feet instead, creating this vast cavern in the process. A natural phenomenon, then, yet with the same feel to it as a sacred site in an exotic land, a place of reverence and hush. Perhaps that was why neither she nor Zara said a word. Or perhaps because no word was truly needed. For such was the Gothic grandeur of the place that it was quite obvious to them both: if you had a king to bury, a man you loved and worshipped, and if you had no cathedral of your own, nor time to build one, this was the place you’d choose.